January 23rd, 2013

Backed By Skype Co-founder Janus Friis, Futureful Launches On The iPad For Smarter Web Surfing

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If you’re a fan of content discovery veteran, StumbleUpon, or haven’t quite been sold by its new look, then you just might have some love for a new startup out of Helsinki, Finland, called Futureful. A product of Finland’s largest, seed-stage startup accelerator, Startup Sauna, Futureful has spent the last three years quietly building a predictive discovery engine that co-founder Marko Anderson… → Read More

November 6th, 2012

Report: StumbleUpon’s Traffic Down 53% Since July

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New data from social plugin provider Shareaholic released today is showing a continued decline in traffic sent to publishers’ websites from StumbleUpon. According to traffic trends on its network, StumbleUpon’s traffic has declined by 53% since July and Twitter now outpaces StumbleUpon’s share of traffic by a slight 0.22%. → Read More

October 7th, 2012

The Forgotten Half Of Social

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Editor’s note: Jack Krawczyk is head of monetization at StumbleUpon, the discovery platform. Jack was a founding member of Google+ and tweets about stuff.

Have we forgotten that being social means connecting with the people in your life? In today’s world of growth hacking and viral marketing, we have taken social to mean acquiring likes and followers so that we can post a photo to Facebook… → Read More

September 25th, 2012

Following Big Mobile Redesign, StumbleUpon Brings New Pinterest-Like Look To The Web

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Veteran content discovery platform StumbleUpon has had a rough go of it over the last six months. In order to keep pace with sexy, young newcomers like Pinterest, StumbleUpon pushed a major redesign at the end of last year, introducing a new user experience and recommendation algorithms, as well as brand channels and a “Stumble” button, which took users to random (personalized) articles based on… → Read More

February 27th, 2012

StumbleUpon Gets NFC Sharing & More On Android; Rolls Out New UI Across Platforms

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At The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, StumbleUpon, the veteran content discovery platform, will be announcing “its first major integration with Android,” says Co-founder Garrett Camp. What does that mean? Well, nearly as we can tell, Google is calling on a handful of apps at MWC to showcase the new integration possibilities (with Google+ and other Google products) that are part of… → Read More

October 3rd, 2011

StumbleUpon Brings Its Tablet Experience To Android, Optimizes UI Across All Its Mobile Apps

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Content discovery platform StumbleUpon, which just launched a much improved iPad app in August, now brings that same user experience to Android with the very first StumbleUpon app designed specifically for Android tablets (the app was previously only available for the Android phone). The app is ready for download in the Android Market here.

The new StumbleUpon Android tablet has basically the… → Read More

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July 11th, 2011

TheiPadWasBuiltForSomethingLikeStumbleUpon,NowTheyHaveAWorthyApp

Since its inception, StumbleUpon has always been one of the most perfect lean-back apps. Long before anyone even used that term, the StumbleUpon toolbar took various pages on the web and allowed you to quickly jump between them to find new things of interest. This concept seems perfect for a device like the iPad. Unfortunately the app just wasn’t very good. Until today.

StumbleUpon has just… → Read More

March 17th, 2011

StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp On What It's Like To Buy Back Your Company

There aren’t many startup founders that have done what Garrett Camp has done. After selling content discovery service StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million in 2007, Camp and investors decided to buy it back for a reported $29 million in 2009.

After the initial series A that was folded back into the spinoff, Camp raised $17 million from August Capital, Accel, and others in a Series B just last week… → Read More

March 9th, 2011

Recommendation Engine StumbleUpon Stumbles Onto $17M From Accel, August Capital And Others

Recommendation engine StumbleUpon has just announced a $17 million Series B round of funding, from Accel Partners, August Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital and Sherpalo Ventures.

StumbleUpon has had an interesting history, being snatched up by eBay  in 2007 and then bought back by its founders for a rumored $29 million plus in 2009. Currently the service has 14 million users and now… → Read More

March 3rd, 2011

The Age Of Relevance

What’s the Next Big Thing after social networking?

This has been a favorite topic of much speculation among tech enthusiasts for many years. I think we are already witnessing a paradigm shift – a move away from simple social sharing towards personalized, relevant content.

The key element of the next big thing is the increasing significance of the Interest Graph to complement the Social… → Read More

January 4th, 2011

StumbleUpon Sent 700M Pageviews To Other Websites In Dec, Is Growing 20% Monthly

Social discovery service StumbleUpon made headlines yesterday when CEO Garrett Camp tweeted out that it had surpassed Facebook in terms of referral traffic on StatCounter.

According to Statcounter, StumbleUpon is now responsible for 43% of all major social media site (StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Myspace and Digg) traffic on the 15 billion pageviews that the analytics service… → Read More

November 27th, 2010

The Myth Of Serendipity

Editor’s note: Henry “Hank” Nothhaft, Jr. is the co-founder and CMO of Trapit, a virtual personal assistant for Web content still in private beta that was incubated out of SRI and the CALO project (as was Siri, the conversational search engine bought by Apple).

One of the most interesting concepts to emerge in media and tech lately is that of “serendipity”—showing people what they want… → Read More

November 17th, 2010

StumbleUpon's Android App Discovery Feature: 1 Million Stumbles And Counting

Discovery engine StumbleUpon recently announced App Discovery, a free beta feature of its Android app that basically suggests mobile apps based on a user’s individual interests and preferences and those of friends and like-minded users.

Turns out people love to stumble, even on the go. → Read More

October 26th, 2010

StumbleUpon Video Finds TED And Hulu Content And Takes Surfing Social

People like stumbling videos more than webpages,” StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp tells us in explaining why the service has decided to revamp their video offering, which they’re doing tonight. While you’ve been able to stumble through videos for a couple of years now, they’re finally making the experience more social. And they’re adding two big names to the arsenal: TED and Hulu.

Previously… → Read More

October 10th, 2010

Tumbl.in Is StumbleUpon For Twitter

Tumbl.in, a project started at our TechCrunch Hackathon during Disrupt, is a like a Stumbleupon for Twitter, allowing you to “stumble across” links shared in your Twitter timeline, your Twitter favorites and your Twitter lists.

Created by UCSC student Suchit Agarwal and Blippy engineer Rahul Thathoo, what’s awesome about Tumbl.in is the same thing that drives Stumbleupon, the delight in finding… → Read More

August 19th, 2010

StumbleUpon Brings Its Serendipitous Discovery To The iPhone And Android

On a desktop computer, StumbleUpon makes sense. You’re on the prowl for cool stuff, click a button and find it. But there is a ton of competition these days among services that let you do this — and increasingly people are relying on Twitter and Facebook for this. But mobile is a different beast. A tailored, contained experience for the small screen is welcomed. That’s exactly what StumbleUpon… → Read More

June 21st, 2010

StumbleUpon Poaches A Pair Of Googlers To Fill Director Roles

Discovery engine startup StumbleUpon today announced it has hired two new directors to expand its sales and partnership teams, both previous Google employees.

Anthony Napolitano, a former key member of the sales teams for several of Google’s products, including TV Ads, Analytics, Checkout and AdWords, will be joining the company as Director of Sales.

Oliver Hsiang, until recently manager of… → Read More

May 18th, 2010

StumbleUpon Quietly Signs Up 10 Millionth User

Without making a lot of noise about it, StumbleUpon yesterday surpassed 10 million registered users. The milestone was reached upon registration of a user that goes by the name Nellzom, a 20-year old from Colombia.

So how do we know he’s mr. diez milliones? → Read More

April 22nd, 2010

StatCounter: Facebook, StumbleUpon Generate More Traffic Than Twitter

According to StatCounter’s GlobalStats research arm, Twitter now generates almost 10% of social media driven global hits to websites, while Facebook still reigns supreme as the primary source of traffic to global websites with almost half (48%) of ‘Social Media hits’.

Surprisingly, the number two social media traffic generator is not Twitter, but StumbleUpon with almost a quarter (25%). → Read More

March 10th, 2010

Google Reader Makes A More Visual Play

Google launched a new service today in from its Labs called Google Reader Play. It is a more visual way to browse through the most popular items being saved and shared on Google Reader. When you launch it, you are presented with a large photo, video, or text excerpt on the main part of the screen, and can flip through by clicking on arrows or selecting an item from the filmstrip at the bottom of… → Read More

February 24th, 2010

The New Twones: Delicious Meets StumbleUpon For Online Music

Twones started life as a FriendFeed-type service that aggregated various music services into a single stream, which we dubbed a social music feed when we first caught wind of it.

Problem was, the startup says, since users generally couldn’t play the music on their site and were constantly being directed to third-party websites and apps for streaming, people never really got that FriendFeed… → Read More

December 5th, 2009

The Startup Visa And Why The Xenophobes Need To Go Back Into Their Caves

Every time I publish a research paper on immigration or write an article for BusinessWeek or TechCrunch, the xenophobes rush out of their caves to launch mindless attacks. They fill the comment sections with bile, send me nasty emails and sometimes threaten to do me harm. I was convinced that my last BusinessWeek column on the Startup visa presented such a compelling argument that even these poor… → Read More

October 8th, 2009

StumbleUpon Recasts Itself As A Social Search Engine "Between Google And Twitter."

Ever since StumbleUpon spun itself off from eBay last April, it’s been reinventing itself at a rapid pace. In June, it launched Su.pr, its own URL shortening service, but that was just an interesting new product. Today, it is starting to roll out a major redesign that recasts the service as a social search engine “somewhere between a Twitter and Google,” says founder Garrett Camp.

About 8… → Read More

August 5th, 2009

Oh No, They Didn't? Tumblr Launches a "TumbleUpon" Toolbar.

What is it with all the toolbar copycat craziness lately. First, there was Digg going after StumbleUpon with the Diggbar. Then StumbleUpon, which already had a toolbar, introduced a new toolbar/URL shortening service called Su.pr.

Now, micro-blogging service Tumblr is getting in on the act with its own toolbar which it is calling TumbleUpon. Could they try to be more blatant in ripping off… → Read More

July 8th, 2009

Su.pr Stumbles Out Of Beta, Officially Enters URL Shortening Wars

Su.pr, StumbleUpon’s URL shortening service, has come out of closed beta. StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay’s clutches, tossed its hat in the URL shortening ring earlier this year. We first heard about Su.pr in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp Tweeted about it. Su.pr, like other shortening tools, lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and… → Read More

July 2nd, 2009

Twine Tries To Manage The Stream With New Coverflow-Like Design

What is the best way to sift through a stream of information? The list view seems to be the most popular because it is information-dense and easy to scan, but it can be overwhelming. More visually appealing ways to manage data are needed. Twine, a site which lets you collect and subscribe to different interest feeds, just introduced a new way to wade through its streams.

The new Flash… → Read More

June 9th, 2009

Can Su.pr Short Links Save StumbleUpon? (250 Private Beta Invites)

Any self-respecting Website these days has its own URL shortening service for easy syndication of links across Twitter, Facebook and other status streams. There are services such as bit.ly and TinyURL. Digg has its controversial Diggbar (which helped lift unique visitors by 20 percent). Hell, even we use our own custom short URL domain (tcrn.ch) via Awe.sm.

Now, StumbleUpon, which was recently… → Read More

April 30th, 2009

StumbleUpon's Ebay Spinoff Valuation: $29 Million

Earlier this month we reported on eBay’s spinoff of StumbleUpon, a company it owned for a little less than two years. Ebay bought the company for $75 million in May 2007. Unknown until now, though, was the spinoff value of StumbleUpon. According to a source close to the transaction, it was $29 million.

New investors Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital joined StumbleUpon founders… → Read More

April 14th, 2009

StumbleUpon, A Case Study In The Efficient Allocation Of Resources

So StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking site that lets users browse and discover new websites by clicking a button, was a subsidiary of eBay for just less than two years. The acquisition made the startup’s founders extremely wealthy, given that they raised just $1.5 million in venture capital, and sold for $75 million.

You’d think that the founders (Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and Justin LeFrance)… → Read More

April 13th, 2009

StumbleUpon Beats Skype In Escaping EBay's Clutches

Back in September, we reported that eBay was attempting to sell off StumbleUpon, the website recommendation service it bought for $75 million in 2007. That didn’t happen. And now the company has been spun off to start life over as an independent startup, backed by new investors and the original founders.

The new company is led by co-founder Garrett Camp, who now steps into the CEO role. → Read More